Festival of Fear Read Online Free PDF

not quite right.’
    â€˜Go on.’
    I told her about the bullet and the way in which Mr Le Renges had insisted that he wasn’t going to report it.
    â€˜Well, that happens. You do get customers who bring in a dead fly and hide it in their salad so they won’t have to pay.’
    â€˜I know. But, I don’t know.’
    After a double portion of chocolate ice cream with vanilla-flavored wafers I walked back to Tony’s where the lunchtime session was just finishing. ‘Mr Le Renges still here?’ I asked Oona.
    â€˜He went over to St Stephen. He won’t be back until six, thank God.’
    â€˜You don’t like him much, do you?’
    â€˜He gives me the heebie-jeebies, if you must know.’
    I went through to Mr Le Renges’ office. Fortunately, he had left it unlocked. I looked in the wastebasket and the bullet was still there. I picked it out and dropped it into my pocket.
    On my way back to the Calais Motor Inn a big, blue pick-up truck tooted at me. It was Nils Guttormsen from Lyle’s Autos, still looking surprised.
    â€˜They brought over your transmission parts from Bangor this morning, John. I should have her up and running in a couple of days.’
    â€˜That’s great news, Nils. No need to break your ass.’ Especially since I don’t have any money to pay you yet.
    I showed the bullet to Velma.
    â€˜That’s truly weird, isn’t it?’ she said.
    â€˜You’re right, Velma. It’s weird, but it’s not unusual for hamburger meat to be contaminated. In fact, it’s more usual than unusual, which is why I never eat hamburgers.’
    â€˜I don’t know if I want to hear this, John.’
    â€˜You should, Velma. See – they used to have federal inspectors in every slaughterhouse, but the Reagan administration wanted to save money, so they allowed the meat-packing industry to take care of its own hygiene procedures. Streamlined Inspection System for Cattle, that’s what they call it – SIS-C.’
    â€˜I never heard of that, John.’
    â€˜Well, Velma, as an ordinary citizen you probably wouldn’t have. But the upshot was that when they had no USDA inspectors breathing down their necks, most of the slaughterhouses doubled their line speed, and that meant there was much more risk of contamination. I mean if you can imagine a dead cow hanging up by its heels and a guy cutting its stomach open, and then heaving out its intestines by hand, which they still do, that’s a very skilled job, and if a gutter makes one mistake – floop ! – everything goes everywhere, blood, guts, dirt, manure, and that happens to one in five cattle. Twenty percent.’
    â€˜Oh, my God.’
    â€˜Oh, it’s worse than that, Velma. These days, with SIS-C, meat-packers can get away with processing far more diseased cattle. I’ve seen cows coming into the slaughterhouse with abscesses and tapeworms and measles. The beef scraps they ship out for hamburgers are all mixed up with manure, hair, insects, metal filings, urine and vomit.’
    â€˜You’re making me feel nauseous, John. I had a hamburger for supper last night.’
    â€˜Make it your last, Velma. It’s not just the contamination, it’s the quality of the beef they use. Most of the cattle they slaughter for hamburgers are old dairy cattle, because they’re cheap and their meat isn’t too fatty. But they’re full of antibiotics and they’ve often infected with E. coli and salmonella. You take just one hamburger, that’s not the meat from a single animal, that’s mixed-up meat from dozens or even hundreds of different cows, and it only takes one diseased cow to contaminate thirty-two thousand pounds of ground beef.’
    â€˜That’s like a horror story, John.’
    â€˜You’re too right, Velma.’
    â€˜But this bullet, John. Where would this bullet come from?’
    â€˜That’s what I